True Tales for my Grandsons. By Sir Samuel Baker. (Macmillan.)
—The elephants, the dogs, and the animals generally, whose doings Sir Samuel Baker relates to us, are creatures with which we have been glad to make acquaintance. The San Francisco dog, in par- ticular, a Good Samaritan among dogs, should have a niche in that chapel of the Temple of Fame which belongs to dogs. As for the human creatures, we must confess to not caring much about them. They help to make history for the more important creatures which it is the fashion to call "inferior." But everything about the book bears the impress of the quality which the author claims for it. Once or twice we are inclined to say " Too true !" as in the sad story of the Captain of the whaler, an Enoch Arden in real life. Truth, however, is no unpleasing change from the superabundance of fiction, with its nice arrangements of poetical justice, that has been overpowering ns for the last few weeks.
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